


The History Books Forgot About Us

by saellys



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Gen, Near Future, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 03:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3880324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/saellys





	The History Books Forgot About Us

1986

Paige answers on the third ring, and immediately has to correct the caller. “This is _Ms_. Jennings.”

“Ms. Jennings, the textbook you ordered has arrived.”

“Thank you. I’ll be in to pick it up this evening.” She doesn’t look at her roommate when she hangs up, doesn’t look at anything, aware of how her pulse has jumped. She wonders if it will do that every time.

\- - - - -

The first time she came with her parents to Sunday brunch at Gabriel’s, it felt like a second baptism. Partly because Gabriel imbues every act with meaning--and now, years on, when he pours her a glass of wine it still seems as charged as the water.

She’s used to the rest of it, though. She’s learned how to speak around him, how to give him and her parents what they want to hear. She hasn’t learned, yet, how to get what she wants to hear from him. Meaningful acts, empty words.

“Paige, how do you find your new partner?”

She chews and swallows carefully before answering. “He’s very… conservative.”

Gabriel arches one brow. “Not politically.”

“No,” she laughs. “He just doesn’t take risks.”

“Good,” her father declares around a mouthful of food, and her mother smiles into her wine.

“He has a great deal to lose,” Gabriel says, “and so do you.”

Paige looks to her mother. “Does he know we’re related?”

Elizabeth takes a breath. “I thought that if it was safe to let him know, it would be best for you to tell him.”

“But there’s no way he’s a threat, right? Not after all he’s done.”

Her parents trade a glance, and Paige always feels like time slows down when they do that, enough for them to have a whole silent conversation, to compare everything they know, which is more than Paige ever will.

Before they can hedge this she says, “If I’m going to work with him, we have to trust each other,” and she looks right into her mother’s eyes. She knows knowledge and trust aren’t the same thing, because two years ago, after her first operation, her parents told her about the Connors.

“It’s up to you, Paige,” her mother says at last.

She tries not to look too triumphant, and goes on like it’s nothing, “Will the Centre want us to do what you two did?”

It takes a moment to dawn on them.

“This isn’t the same--”

“There’s plenty of time to--”

Paige turns toward Gabriel, who observed this exchange with his hands on the table and his glass untouched. She won’t get a straight answer, but she might get enough to know how to move forward.

“When your parents came to America,” he tells her, “your mother wasn’t much older than you. There were certain expectations then. But times have changed, and I think it’s safe to say women have far more opportunities now.”

His expression suggests that she’s meant to feel comforted by this rather than patronized, so Paige nods like he said something significant, and goes back to her food. “Good,” she replies, “because I’m not even sure I like boys.”

Her dad coughs.

\- - - - -

“You look nice,” Hans says when she ducks into the car, dripping rain. “As a brunette, I mean.” Paige musters a smile, not because she’s flattered but because he’s trying. He offers a towel and she pats herself dry, mindful of the wig. “You can hold your liquor?”

She nods and listens to the wipers. “And if you need to get out, there’s a bathroom in the back with a window--”

“You should be more worried about whether he’ll believe what I say,” Paige tells him.

“Of course he will,” Hans says, and he looks away from the road long enough to meet her gaze. “People would believe anything you say.”

Paige stares. “Maybe you would,” she says at last.

He doesn’t seem to take this as an insult. “I’m a teacher. I’m trained to see through bullshit.”

She lets that one slide, even though it’s tempting. “If I need to leave with him, I’ll have my hood up.”

“If you need to,” he echoes.

“If he isn’t convinced. Or if I can get more out of him. Or--” she pushes it--”if I want to.”

“There’s plenty of leeway. Whatever you choose to do is fine.” Paige knows he’s never met Gabriel, but that response is so meaningless they might as well be related.

Which reminds her. “I’ve been thinking about what we discussed.”

She hears him swallow. “Have you?”

Paige elaborates, “And I don’t think they’d try it.”

“No?”

The night after Gabriel’s, she stood outside her parents’ door and listened to her mother’s voice. _Her life will be different._

_Keep telling yourself that until you believe it. Look at the jobs they’re sending her on._

“The Centre wants something else from me,” she says. “A career, a trajectory--maybe the CIA, or politics. They want to get the most out of who I am, not just turn me into my parents all over again.”

_They’re testing her._

_And when they see she’s as good at this as we are, why let that go to waste? She’s four years younger than you were when we started._

“Throwing a scandal into that wouldn’t serve their purpose,” she goes on. “They need my record clean, to--to--”

“Capitalize?” Hans says.

_Then what would it benefit them to tie her down with him?_

_He’s the closest thing we have to a senior agent._

Paige’s mouth twists. “Capitalize. And they can’t do that if we get busted because you have an affair with a student.”

He’s silent for a moment. “Politics, hm?”

_Give him a better foothold? You’re assuming they don’t care about her part in this at all._

_Yes, I am._

She shrugs. “We’ve had forty male Presidents. Why not aim high?”

Hans reaches behind her headrest and cranes his neck to back into a parking spot. “So there would be nothing untoward about Senator Jennings getting a drink with her old political science professor when she’s on the campaign trail?”

“Nothing,” she says, not smiling. “My point is, I don’t think you need to worry.”

“Who says I was worried?”

She looks at him once more, and wonders, not for the first time, if he stood watch like this the night her--the night Alice and Pastor Tim died. “That’s what you do,” she says, and he turns away from her gaze at once.

A moment later he says, softly, “There he is.” Paige opens the door and rain sheets in. Before she can get out, Hans catches her elbow, and she stops. “You have a paper due tomorrow.” He doesn’t add _so don’t stay out too late_. It would be maddeningly paternal, if Paige’s father had ever badgered her about schoolwork.

“I already wrote it,” she tells him, and she can see he believes her. Paige pulls her arm from his grip and gets out of the car, and goes to meet her target.

\- - - - -

The next morning he looks like he didn’t sleep well, but Paige doesn’t have to pretend to be rested when she hands in her paper. “Morning, Professor Bekker.”

“Good morning, Ms. Jennings,” Hans says, and first he searches her face, then the top sheet of her essay, as if she might have put a one-time pad there. But she’s not going to tell him how it went while the rest of the class find their seats, and she knows he won’t ask the next time they’re alone, either. The rest, the things he wouldn’t know to ask even if he could work up the nerve, will have to wait until she’s sure she can trust him.

The last time she spoke too soon, she learned.


End file.
